Ah, just another reason to love George Clooney. Via MSNBC:

Actor George Clooney, long a political activist, was arrested and handcuffed outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington for protesting the country's blockage of food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains area of the country, as well as its treatment of its people.

Clooney's father, journalist Nick Clooney, 78, was with him and was also arrested, as were Martin Luther King III, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Rep Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Mass.). The group was handcuffed with plastic handcuffs and were taken away by police.

Speaking before the large crowd that gathered to watch the protest, Clooney said "we need immediate humanitarian aid into Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world."

Earlier this week, Clooney testified before a Senate committee on the Sudan crisis. Here is the conclusion of his statement, where he passionately argued for the US to take steps, including putting pressure on China to pressure Khartoum to end the atrocious human rights violations in that country.

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I don't watch many NBA games anymore; I eventually hit my tolerance level for the overpriced, spoiled child-men who make up the bulk of the players. But I was always impressed by Manute Bol, who saw the NBA only as the day job that allowed him to do such good things for his native country - and even managed to get more NBA players join in to help:

Manute Bol fascinated millions of sports fans as a 7-foot-7 shot blocker during 10 NBA seasons. But Bol’s joy came from spending the millions he made in pro basketball to help his native Sudan.

Bol died Saturday morning at the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville, where he was being treated for severe kidney trouble and a painful skin condition, said Tom Prichard, the executive director of Sudan Sunrise in Lenexa.

Bol, who was living in Olathe, was 47.

“Manute put his wealth on the line, he put his health on the line, he was a leader in speaking out for his people and for reconciliation,” Prichard said Saturday. “Even to the end, he was choosing helping Sudan over looking out for himself.

“It’s pretty hard to find somebody who can top that.”

Bol was hospitalized in mid-May during a stopover in Washington after returning to the United States from Sudan, where he was helping build a school in conjunction with Sudan Sunrise. Bol had stayed in Sudan a week longer than anticipated after the president of southern Sudan asked him to make election appearances to help counter corruption.

Prichard told The Star that Bol knew he needed medical care but put it off because the president asked him to stay.

“There’s no question Manute gave his life for his country,” Prichard said, noting that Bol said in the hospital “I did it” in having the election turn out the right way.

“They wanted Manute’s influence, and he wanted to change things in his county.”

According to reports, Bol made nearly $6 million in his career and spent nearly all of it trying to save lives and educate children in Sudan. More than 2 million Christians in southern Sudan, including many of Bol’s family, were killed in the country’s second civil war that ended in 2005.

His family was wiped out by Darfurians, but when Darfur was under attack, Bol was one of the first Sudanese to speak out in support. He told his people that extremists were the enemy, not Muslims.

During his playing career, Bol went into war zones to help the Lost Boys and other refugees. Sometimes, those visits were interrupted by bombings from warlords who viewed Bol as a threat.

Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.

The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq (news - web sites), North Korea (news - web sites), Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records...read on

Oh I'm sorry I think this story might be a liberal media plant. Didn't the Bush administration go hard after the terror money?

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David Gregory launched a pillow soft environment for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to perpetuate her public relations revisionism on the Bush Legacy™. The only way Gregory could have made it any cushier on her would have been to ask for gauzy soft focus on her camera.

My irony meter (sharply honed from years of watching impotent journalism like this) redlined when Gregory asks Rice if she harbors any regrets of her days representing the Worst. Presidency. Ever. Does she 'fess up to any qualms about lowering our nation's moral authority by torturing? Does she feel a bit squeamish about her role in invading and occupying a country that posed no threat to us while giving aid to countries that could? Does she regret not picking up that extra pair of Jimmy Choos while New Orleans drowned?

Nah....Rice's regrets center around her inability to garner world support to do something about Sudan. And gosh, why is it that the rest of the world seems so reticent to assist the US? Could it be that you blew all good will by entering an unnecessary war and demonizing any country who questioned the wisdom of such action? But the best part is Rice's rationalization for why the US doesn't just go it alone:

(A)cting unilaterally in an Arab country or in a Muslim country that is that complex, that far away, really did not seem to be an option.

Ah...would that you had learned that lesson much, much earlier. Perhaps then you would not have the genocide you did cause while you wring your hands impotently over Darfur.

Does David Gregory point that out? Surely, you jest. Living in the vacuum of the Beltway Bubble where little factoids like that don't rear their ugly heads, Gregory ropes in a little Clinton blame too:

MR. GREGORY: Isn't it amazing, the last 16 years of American leadership, two presidents, two big regrets stand out: Rwanda and Darfur.

SEC'Y RICE: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: The failure to prevent and protect innocent people from genocide.

Um, David, I don't know if you bother to look past the White House talking points faxed to you prior to the show, but they've failed to prevent and protect innocent people in far more areas than Darfur. Heard about New Orleans? Iraq? Afghanistan? Hell, look at the memorial for unnecessary deaths erected near my home. Of course, part of the talking points for the Bush Legacy Upgrade is that they have protected innocent lives...so Gregory asks nary a follow-up to this load of lies:

I will say that we've also been engaged in activities that have protected innocent people. Look at Saddam Hussein's record of, really, genocide inside of Iraq, what he did to Shia populations, to Kurdish populations, actually using weapons of mass destruction. Look at what the Taliban did to populations in Afghanistan. And so, in those circumstances, where the marriage of our values and our security interests has put us forward in a more active military way, we have tried to protect innocent people.

I'm curious, Condi, did you bother to read the Levin/McCain report? Your "values" have left us less safe.

Nice of David to let you get away with your lies. Good to see that you can count on Tim Russert's successor to continue to be the go-to guy when you need to "catapult the propaganda."

Transcripts below the fold

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Let's see...there's Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Sudan and North Korea...and this is what Bush decides to use his diplomacy skills on?

Daily Mail:
US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
Cohen, 35, creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.

And now a movie of Borat's adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.
Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country's image.
President Nazarbayev has confirmed his government will buy "educational" TV spots and print advertisements about the "real Kazakhstan" in a bid to save the country's reputation before the film is released in the US in November.

President Nazarbayev will visit the White House and the Bush family compound in Maine when he flies in for talks that will include the fictional character Borat. Read on...

The Slacktivist has the answer (excerpt-please read the whole artice)

In many times and in many places, Christians have faced persecution because of their faith. The United States in the early 21st century is not such a time and place. Right now, as you read this, people are suffering imprisonment, disenfranchisement and physical harm because they are Christians. None of these people live in the United States.

The United States is a liberal democracy with a Constitution that guarantees freedom of conscience. This makes it a haven against religious persecution for people of all faiths and of no faith. Christians in America enjoy rights and legal protections that Christians in other parts of the world -- China, North Korea, the Sudan -- can only dream of. By culture and convention, Christians in America enjoy privileges and power that their coreligionists in other countries could never dream of. When or where in history was it ever easier to profess Christianity in whatever form you might choose?

And yet scarcely a day goes by, regardless of whether or not it is "Justice Sunday," in which some group of American Christians does not claim that they are facing "persecution."

They dare to use that word...read on